Psychology Research

This historical science comes at you courtesy of gg over at SkullsintheStars , a true history buff and an awesome physicist. He handed me this paper the other day, figuring it would be right up my alley, and it is, but it’s also a HUGE can of worms. Because, let’s be honest, it’s not easy to talk about death. And it’s even harder when you’re trying to talk about ideas written by a guy in 1834, who’s prose is, at the very least…convoluted. An example: The sensorial functions constitute the sensitive system,-that by which we perceive and act,- and consequently are connected with the world which surrounds us. The nervous and muscular, the vital system, that by which we are maintained. From the same experiments it appears, that what is called death consists in the loss of the first of these classes of functions, the sensorial, the nervous and muscular functions still continuing… Yeah. Aren’t you glad now that Sci is reading this FOR you and you’re getting the Cliff’s Notes? Philip, APW. “On the nature of death” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1834. The character Death, from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman . Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

Let me first introduce myself and this blog, which is titled Total Brain Workout. I am a professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto, and one of my main areas of cultural research is puzzles. I have also been teaching an undergraduate course on puzzles (their history and cultural meaning) at the University for many years. It is one of the most satisfying courses I have ever taught because, by the end of it, the students not only develop puzzle-solving skills (which they may have thought they didn’t have at the start), but also come out of it with a better perspective about the role of puzzles in human life. This blog is modeled on puzzles that I put together for my recent book, The Total Brain Workout: 450 Puzzles to Sharpen Your Mind, Improve Your Memory & Keep Your Brain Fit, published by Harlequin Books. It will contain one or two puzzles, and (if relevant) the history behind them, to tease your brain and thus keep it fit. As I indicate in the preface to that book, it would seem that such apparently “trivial amusements” foster brain growth, by stimulating logical and creative thinking regions of the brain. Research has come forward to suggest (although not prove beyond a shadow of a doubt) that puzzles sharpen the mind, improve memory, and keep the brain fit throughout life, and especially later life. As a boomer myself, and a puzzle addict since my childhood, I welcome this news. If puzzles are to the brain what physical exercise is to the body, then let’s do puzzles-not just for fun, but more importantly for brain fitness. And even if the research is not exactly what it is claimed to be, so what! Doing puzzles cannot hurt. Puzzles are as old as human history. They are found in all cultures throughout time. One of the first documented puzzle-and still one of the most famous-is the Riddle of the Sphinx. According to myth and legend, when Oedipus approached the city of Thebes he encountered a gigantic sphinx guarding entrance to the city. The menacing beast confronted Oedipus, posing the following riddle to him, and warning him that if he failed to answer it correctly he would die instantly at the Sphinx’s hands: What has four feet in the morning, two at noon, and three at night? The fearless Oedipus answered (paraphrasing his statement somewhat): “Humans, who crawl on all fours as babies, then walk on two legs as grown-ups, and finally need a cane in old age to get around.” Upon hearing the answer, the astonished sphinx killed itself, and Oedipus entered Thebes as a hero for having gotten rid of the terrible monster that had kept the city in captivity for so long. Ironically, by solving the riddle the devastating prophecy, which Oedipus tried to elude-that he would kill his father (which he did unwittingly on the way to Thebes) and marry his mother, the widowed queen of Thebes-came true. Why are we so intrigued by stories such as this one which revolve around puzzles? The answer might lie in the origin of the English word puzzle itself, which comes from the Middle English word poselen “to bewilder, confuse.” And indeed, puzzles generate bewilderment and confusion, because they cannot be solved by applying any formula or method mindlessly. They always require a dose of creative, unconventional thinking, which psychologists call “insight thinking.” This is essentially an intuitive grasp of a pattern or twist concealed by the puzzle. Given their appeal, some puzzles have given origin to commonly-held ideas, such as the one that life is comparable to the three main parts of a day (the Riddle of the Sphinx). Others are the source of everyday expressions. Here is a brainteaser that gave origin to the expression “thinking outside the box.” Many readers undoubtedly know it: Without letting your pencil leave the paper, can you draw four straight lines through the following nine dots? Those who may not have come across this puzzle before might tend to approach it by joining up the dots as if they were located on the perimeter (boundary) of an imaginary square or flattened box. But this reading of the puzzle does not yield a solution, no matter how many times one tries to draw four straight lines without lifting the pencil. A dot is always left over. It is at this point where creative thinking comes into play: “What would happen if I extend one or more of the four lines beyond the box?” That hunch turns out, in fact, to be the relevant insight. One possible solution is as follows: Can you find the others? It should now be obvious why this puzzle gave rise to the expression “thinking outside the box,” which entered the English language around the middle part of the twentieth century when people in business and education started referring to it as a prototypical example of what creative or “lateral” thinking is all about. It continues to be cited by psychologists as an example of how the mind tends to impose unnecessary limitations upon methods of attacking problems. Who invented the puzzle? I have looked into several sources and have been able to trace it as far back as 1914, in the first edition of puzzlist Sam Loyd’s (1841-1911) Cyclopedia of Puzzles. But the principle it embodies is probably older, as Martin Gardner indicates in his 1960 edition of Loyd’s work (titled The Mathematical Puzzles of Sam Loyd). The Nine-Dot puzzle is a 3 × 3 version of what can be called generally a Dot-Joining puzzle. Can you solve the Sixteen-Dot (4 × 4) and Twenty-Five Dot (5 × 5) versions? Again, you just connect the dots without lifting your pencil. How many lines are required in each of these two cases? Do you detect a correlation between number of dots and number of connecting lines? Sixteen-Dot Version Twenty-Five-Dot Version As a final word on Dot-Joining puzzles, I should mention that, as with any puzzle genre, once the general principle involved in solving them is deciphered, the genre starts losing its appeal. However, like any good joke, Dot-Joining puzzles can be played on others over and over to great effect. I await your answers, solutions, discussions, anecdotes, etc. for this particular puzzle, including any general formula for solving any general version (n × n) of the puzzle (if there is one). I also welcome suggestions for future puzzles on this blog. This is going to be fun!  (Scroll down for the answers)                           Answers Each of the following constitutes only one possible solution. Sixteen-Dot Version Six lines are needed for this version of the puzzle. As mentioned other solutions are possible. All involve six lines. Twenty-Five-Dot Version Eight lines are needed for this version of the puzzle. Other solutions are possible. Can we generalize? By making the Nine-Dot puzzle as complex as we desire (increasing the number of dots to 16, 25, 36, 49, etc.), a pattern seems to emerge through inspection. This pattern can be charted as follows: Dots    Lines Required 3 × 3    (3 + 1) = 4 4 × 4    (4 + 2) = 6 5 × 5    (5 + 3) = 8 6 × 6    (6 + 4) = 10 …    … n × n    n + (n – 2) = 2n – 2 I should point out that I have not tested this pattern beyond a 6 × 6 version of the puzzle. As with all inductively-derived formulas, there is no way to be sure that the formula works all the time. It thus can be called, simply, a working formula.  

The following is from a recent New York Times article on how snack food company Frito-Lay have based their latest women-focused campaign on ‘neuromarketing’. Parts of the article nearly made with weep with despair. [Advertising agency] Juniper Park used neuromarketing in a slightly different way. Ms. Nykoliation began by researching how women’s brains compared with men’s, so the firm could adjust the marketing accordingly. Her research suggested that the communication center in women’s brains was more developed, leading her to infer that women could process ads with more complexity and more pieces of information. Hang on a minute. Communication centre larger in women? She doesn’t mean… the crockus by any chance? A memory and emotional center, the hippocampus, was proportionally larger in women, so Ms. Nykoliation concluded that women would look for characters they could empathize with. Stop sniffing the TipEx. And research Ms. Nykoliation read linked the anterior cingulate cortex, which processes decision-making and was larger in women, to feelings of guilt. (Experts differ on how directly functions or feelings are associated with various parts of the brain.) Ms. Nykoliation then asked NeuroFocus to review her assumptions and, as Juniper Park developed ads, to test the ads to verify that women liked them. We should have guessed a ‘neuromarketing’ company would be involved. Neuromarketing is an interesting research field looking at the neuroscience of buyer decisions but so far there is not a single scrap of data that shows neuroscience can better predict buyer decisions that plain old ‘marketing’. In other words, if you’re wanting to actually market a product, it’s a huge waste of money. However, that hasn’t stopped various ‘neuromarketing’ companies from springing up and selling their sweet nothings to large corporations for hard cash. I say a huge waste of money, but it did get them a feature in The New York Times who also posted their commercial online, so maybe it’s not such a daft move after all. Link to NYT article.

Today’s issue of Science has a letter from neuroscientist Martha Farah and theologian Nancey Murphy warning against ‘non-materialist neuroscience’ becoming the new front-line in the religion wars. Most religions endorse the idea of a soul (or spirit) that is distinct from the physical body. Yet as neuroscience advances, it increasingly seems that all aspects of a person can be explained by the functioning of a material system. This first became clear in the realms of motor control and perception. Yet, models of perceptual and motor capacities such as color vision and gait do not directly threaten the idea of the soul. You can still believe in what Gilbert Ryle called “the ghost in the machine” and simply conclude that color vision and gait are features of the machine rather than the ghost. However, as neuroscience begins to reveal the mechanisms underlying personality, love, morality, and spirituality, the idea of a ghost in the machine becomes strained. Brain imaging indicates that all of these traits have physical correlates in brain function. Furthermore, pharmacologic influences on these traits, as well as the effects of localized stimulation or damage, demonstrate that the brain processes in question are not mere correlates but are the physical bases of these central aspects of our personhood. If these aspects of the person are all features of the machine, why have a ghost at all? By raising questions like this, it seems likely that neuroscience will pose a far more fundamental challenge than evolutionary biology to many religions. Predictably, then, some theologians and even neuroscientists are resisting the implications of modern cognitive and affective neuroscience. “Nonmaterialist neuroscience” has joined “intelligent design” as an alternative interpretation of scientific data. This work is counterproductive, however, in that it ignores what most scholars of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures now understand about biblical views of human nature. These views were physicalist, and body-soul dualism entered Christian thought around a century after Jesus’ day. As I’ve noted before , I remain sceptical that this will pose much of a threat, largely due to the fact that non-materialist neuroscience is not particularly new – many famous neuroscientists (including the Nobel prize-winning John Eccles) have been explicitly non-materialist with few contemporary ripples. Unlike evolution, which bluntly contradicts what many religious texts claim, very few holy books describe any concepts of the soul that can be directly contradicted by neuroscience. However, there is certainly some interest in the neuroscience bashing among Christian fundamentalists, who recently held their first conference on the issue. We shall have to see how successfully they manage to enthuse their flock. Link to letter ‘Neuroscience and the Soul’. Link to DOI entry for same.

In my last post I talked about the value of self knowledge in the context of neuro-psychological testing. I said, "There is no downside to testing." Several readers took me to task for that, pointing out that there can be a downside . . . learning that you are officially "different" can be a crushing blow to the psyche. I have thought about that point quite a bit. Frankly, although I acknowledge what people are saying, it does not make a lot of sense to me. Why would increased self knowledge be such a blow? ADD, Asperger’s or autism are neurological differences. They are (generally) stable conditions, not diseases that progress. If you learn you are on the spectrum, it’s not a death sentence. You’re not going to become senile or lose your wits. So why is the knowledge of why you are different so hard to take? I think we grow up with certain notions of what conditions like "autistic" mean. We think, I’m glad that doesn’t apply to me. Then, all of a sudden, we are told it does apply. Our self image takes a hit. I can understand that, but I still believe that knowledge is power. We can’t change our lives for the better unless we understand what needs changing. Therefore, it is necessary to get beyond the shock of a diagnosis and move into understanding what it means, in terms of how we act, live and get along. To me, critical comments like Samwick’s (on my main blog) illustrate the danger of labels, which is rather a different issue that what I originally meant to write about. When I wrote my original post, I thought how much diagnosis meant to me by helping me understand exactly how my mind differed from other minds around me. For example, the simple insight that I miss nonverbal cues was life-changing. I seized upon the specific behavioral issues and set about constructing a better life. It worked. Words cannot express how much better my life is, thanks to the self-knowledge I’ve gained since learning about my Asperger’s. For some other people, it does not work that way because they become sidetracked by preconceived notions about "having a diagnosis." Instead of looking at their own specific issues, they look at broad statistics associated with the diagnosis. They see phrases like, 32% can’t live independently, or 66% never get married and have a family. They become trapped in generalities rather than focusing on specific issues to make their own lives better. They interpret those general statistics as a prediction for their own future, when it’s nothing of the sort. More specifically, they see their future as inexorably tied to every unfavorable broad statistics associated with their diagnosis. IN that sense, some DO see an autism diagnosis as a sentence to some kind of living death. They get swallowed up by diagnosis, forgetting the fact that they’ve lived their lives before and life goes on after. That is the danger of a label. Some people read what’s associated with a label, and make it self-fulfilling. They let go and become the label. That negative outcome can be reinforced by teachers and adults who say or think, He has a diagnosis of autism. We can’t expect too much of him. That is most assuredly not the way I have lived my life. For knowledge to have power in this context, it must be you-specific knowledge. You should not care what 66% of people do in this context. You should care that you have specific and identified strengths and weaknesses. For example, testing might show that you can read subtle emotion in voices, but you can’t pick signals up from faces alone. That’s an example of knowledge you can act on to make your life better. The fact is, you ARE that way. It’s not new, and you’re not getting worse. You are already living your life in context. Understanding can only help. Next, I’d like to address another important point . . . the risk of a wrong diagnosis. People say, What if I get an Asperger diagnosis when I really have ADD? Can’t that be harmful? That actually goes back to my comments on the dangers of labels. To me, the label does not matter. What matters are the specific insights into your own behaviors and identification of your personal strengths and weaknesses. There is no hazard to learning those things. I agree that diagnostic errors can be harmful, but that too is another subject. Don’t focus on the label. Focus on the behavioral insights. Ask yourself, does the result make sense? If it does, you are the way to improvement. If it doesn’t make sense, question the tester. Perhaps the results don’t mean what he thought. In the end, it is the specific behavioral insights that allow you to make a better life, not a broad brush label. People are not labels. Our personalities are made of countless eccentricities and aberrations, and it’s those I seek to understand. The power is in the details. There is no power in a broad brush label. Finally, there is another danger of diagnosis. That is with your medical record. What if you receive an autism diagnosis and it’s entered into your "official" record because you had the testing done by a professional who’s paid by a health insurer? It’s possible that you could be rated unfavorably for insurance, or even denied insurance later in life. What to do about that? The only answer I know is to pay for testing on your own, and make your own decision where the results are released. I would have some concerns about having any diagnostic information in my medical record because the evidence indicates insurers sometimes try and use those records against us for their own advantage. So the issue of "downsides to the diagnosis" is not as clear-cut as I originally portrayed. I apologize to those who felt my original post was misleading or incomplete. © 2009 Psychology Today. This RSS Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact blogs@psychologytoday.com so we can take legal action immediately.

Reading groups are a great activity whether you are an undergraduate looking for ways to pad your CV and get good letters of recommendation, or a graduate student wanting to be more involved in your program. Seeking out groups that read, discuss and critique peer-reviewed articles is also a great way to immerse yourself in the literature of your field. In this post I will discuss three of the reading groups that I have participated in, as well as suggest some ways to choose and participate in these types of reading groups. The first reading group I was involved in at my current institution was called the Biological Basis of Behavior (BBoB) , a multi-domain (Neuroscience, Clinical Psychology, Philosophy, and more) discussion group sponsored by the Behavioral Neuroscience division of the psychology department. The discussion leader sends out an article 1-2 weeks before the group meets, and discussants email in comments and questions about the article. Every three weeks during the 1 hour meeting the leader begins by summarizing the paper, and then attempts to address the comments of the group. There is a mix of mainly faculty, some graduate students and a few undergraduates present. The discussion leaders are generally faculty in the fall and graduate students in the spring. The most advantageous aspect of BBoB is the option to e-mail in comments, this allows students to contribute even if they don’t have enough personality to compete with faculty in the actual meeting. It is also refreshing to see what papers students choose to present in the spring, and is a great opportunity for graduate students to advertise their interests to faculty. The disadvantage is the high proportion of faculty to students, which means that discussions can sometime revolve around minutiae of interest only to the most invested of readers, and domination of the discussion by faculty. Of course it is also worthwhile to hear faculty debate amongst themselves, and often quite entertaining. The second reading group I have been attending is the Animal Behavior Discussion Group (ABDG), sponsored by the biology department. This group is similar to BBoB, except that it meets every week, and has a much smaller faculty presence. While not always directly pertinent for my own studies, this discussion group has provided lots of valuable information on the perspectives of a field of science that is distinct but related to my own discipline. The big student presence means that discussions tend to focus on the methods and topics of the paper being presented, and often revolve around understanding the unique features and flaws of the science as published. It is also advantageous to network with students and faculty in related fields as they may be good choices for collaborators on future work. The last reading group I’ve been involved with is a grant writing group that hasn’t created an acronym yet. The goal of the group is to get students and faculty to help each other read and write grant proposals in an effort to secure more funding for the individuals and the institution. While this group has met irregularly and infrequently I have to say it has certainly been the most valuable. The grant writing process is both arcane and arduous, and having some guidance from those that have been through it has proven invaluable. So I would highly recommend any sort of skill-building group that can help you get an edge when entering unfamiliar territory. While this post has been entirely biased by my personal experiences, I’m hoping that it will help you recognize the advantages of getting involved in reading groups at your school. It’s a great way to become known by your professors and to learn about the recent events in psychology. If your school doesn’t have a reading group, check nearby schools, or start your own! © 2009 Psychology Today. This RSS Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact blogs@psychologytoday.com so we can take legal action immediately.

I am an unabashed lover of Scientific American. Well, ok, I’m also a grad student. So I can’t AFFORD Scientific American. But luckily, Scientific American has podcasts! There’s a regular weekly one that is around 40 minutes long, and then there are daily ones, called ‘60-second science’. 60-second science represents the latest science tidbits as they come out, and, most endearing to Sci, they cover the good, the bad, and the weird. So I was very excited when I found out that Scientific American, specifically 60-second science, was putting out a BOOK! And when I found out that is was about BRAINS, and that I could review it, I got even happier. And it’s got a forward by Steve Mursky, who does the main Scientific American podcast. That is a sexy, sexy guy. And HINT: If you read to the bottom, there could be something good for you in it!! Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

The Seven Questions project welcomes renowned brain expert and bestselling author Daniel Amen. You may have seen him preach his message of change on PBS , on bookshelves or at professional conferences. He’s not simply suggesting you can change your attitude or behavior, he actually believes you can change your brain. In an effort to illuminate the various clinical approaches to psychotherapy, this series asks the same seven questions to influential authors, theorists and policymakers. Dr. Amen, a revered and sometimes controversial figure in popular psychiatry is our honored guest today. Daniel G. Amen (MD, Oral Roberts University, 1982) is a psychiatrist, brain imaging specialist and the CEO and medical director of Amen Clinics , Inc. (ACI) in Newport Beach and Fairfield, California, Tacoma, Washington and Reston, Virginia. ACI has the world’s largest database of functional brain scans related to psychiatric medicine, now totaling nearly 50,000 scans, and the clinics have seen patients from 75 countries. Dr. Amen is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine. No stranger to the public sphere, Dr. Amen is one of the hardest working and most diverse MD’s out there, sharing his wisdom in nutrition columns , on the Men’s Health Q & A forum and even paid a visit to  The View  to discuss brain-based gender differences. Dr. Amen is the author of 22 books , including two New York Times bestsellers, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life and Magnificent Mind at Any Age . He has also written and produced two highly successful specials for public television. His method employs a balanced approach to treating mood, attention and relational problems. A review of Magnificent Mind  states: "Dr. Amen has rendered the growing trend of not treating the whole person, and of using prescription medicine as the first or only choice for mental and physical health, completely obsolete." Dr. Amen shares his opinions on psychotherapy with us today. As a psychiatrist who believes in : "using the least toxic, most effective treatments for our patients, … from natural supplements, medications, dietary interventions and targeted forms of psychotherapy," I knew he’d contribute some unique thoughts to the discussion. For example, his answer to Q3 is an important reminder that many psychological symptoms can have a biological etiology. Please enjoy Dr. Amen’s responses to the Seven Questions. Seven Questions for Daniel Amen: 1. How would you respond to a new client who asks: "What should I talk about?" His or her biggest concerns. A good history is so critical to the therapeutic process. It starts with someone’s concerns and then expands from there. I take a bio-psycho-social-spiritual approach to my patients and want them to talk to me about all of these issues. 2. What do clients find most difficult about the therapeutic process? Being confused as how to help themselves. Most people who see me want to be better, but the therapeutic process is so foreign to them. I think they need very clear direction on how to be most effective in using the process. 3. What mistakes do therapists make that hinder the therapeutic process? The biggest mistake I see is that they rarely consider the brain. I often say psychiatrists are the only medical specialists that never look at the organ they treat. How crazy is that! How do we know unless we look? We call people who have brain damage personality disordered? We call people with toxic exposure resistant to treatment? We think of depression as a singular illness, when it has many types, like chest pain. We need to do much better and it will start when we really take brain function seriously. 4. In your opinion, what is the ultimate goal of therapy? Better brain function. I am convinced therapy goes much faster, and patients are better able to do their own lives when you help your patients have better brain function. 5. What is the toughest part of being a therapist? Not having enough information to be helpful. 6. What is the most enjoyable or rewarding part of being a therapist? Helping people change their lives in a positive way. I have so many stories of how when a person’s brain is better that they become more effective, more loving, more passionate … that it brings me joy on a regular basis. 7. What is one pearl of wisdom you would offer clients about therapy? Think about the brain, how to improve it and you will be more effective in all you do. ——– My gratitude to International Psychoanalysis , The Library of Economics and Liberty , Introductory Psychology Resources , Psychlinks Online and the American Psychological Association for blogging about or linking to the Seven Questions. There’s even a European magazine named  Charaktery asking seven questions to influential Polish psychotherapists. My goal was to get people talking about psychotherapy so it’s nice to see interest from such diverse venues. © 2009 Psychology Today. This RSS Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact blogs@psychologytoday.com so we can take legal action immediately.

On the question of new antidepressants and suicide, the evidence we have has been synthesized, and the results are in : the medications prevent suicides in adults, and especially in the elderly. For children and adolescents, we simply don’t know – and the gap in our knowledge has had dangerous effects. World Health Organization scientists based in Italy and Canada have re-analyzed data on over 200,000 patients with depression treated with serotonergic antidepressants, or SSRIs. With a pool this large, the researchers were able to look past ideation to actual attempts or completed suicides. The study found a strong protective effect for adults, including young adults, aged 18 to 25, and the elderly, over age 65. The medications decreased the risk of suicide by over 40 per cent in adults aged 18 to 64, and by over 50 per cent in older patients. These results are striking, especially in the light of earlier FDA summaries that found a neutral effect for non-elderly adults and a negative effect for young adults. But the FDA reports were based on research not designed to investigate suicidality, and the data were skewed conservatively, that is, in ways that might over-identify suicidal behavior. The new analysis is more clear-cut; it moves the line of high risk down from age 25 to age 18. What happens below age 18 is uncertain. Both the FDA summary and yesterday’s analysis found a marked increase in suicidality in depressed adolescents treated with SSRIs. (Unless I’m reading the data wrong, the risk for youth looks to be almost double on medication.) But as an accompanying editorial indicates, a large body of research points in the opposite direction. For instance, examining all youth suicides (42 deaths) over a five-year period, Danish pathologists found that none of the adolescents had been on SSRIs. In many countries, studies have found that low SSRI prescribing levels correlate with high youth suicide rates. Decreased SSRI prescribing since the FDA issued its "black box" warning has been associated with increased rates of suicide in adolescents. And some of the studies (including ones in the current WHO analysis) that have demonstrated an increase in suicidality are poorly controlled, so that the young people on SSRIs may be more seriously ill than those in the comparison group. We need to settle this issue: As regards risk of suicide, do SSRIs help or harm depressed adolescents? The editorial assessing the WHO study contains these disturbing sentences: "Alarmingly, concerns about the risk of suicide in youth have led not only to fewer SSRI prescriptions without substitution of alternative medications or psychotherapies, but also to a decrease in predicted rates of diagnosis of mood disorders. Since a decrease in the rate of true depression is improbable, clinicians may be avoiding making this diagnosis to avoid the dilemma of whether to prescribe antidepressants to children or adolescents." This worry was one that experts raised when the FDA was considering its action – that a warning, however carefully worded, might cost lives. (I should note that on balance I favored the black box warning.) As the editorial indicates, "in youth, suicide appears to occur most commonly among those with untreated mood disorders." My own impression – I discuss it in Against Depression – is that antidepressants simply work less well in children, and for reasons that accord well with the prevailing neurobiological theories of mood disorder. But when the medications do appear to help, are they dangerous? The new study again raises special worries about Paxil and also Effexor in young patients. Incidentally, two of the WHO researchers on the new study, Andrea Cipriani and Corrado Barbui, were also authors of the widely publicized recent summary analysis that rated the relative merits of antidepressants. As in the prior report, in the new one Zoloft looks especially safe, at least in adults. © 2009 Psychology Today. This RSS Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact blogs@psychologytoday.com so we can take legal action immediately.

From SCONC : Even if you haven’t heard of Bisphenol A (BPA), you’ve likely been exposed to it. The endocrine disrupting compound is common in plastic infant bottles, water bottles, food cans and lots of other products. Scientists debate its dangers but the National Toxicology Program (based in RTP) acknowledges BPA as a source of “some concern” due to its possible harm to the brains and behavior of fetuses, infants and children. On Wed. Feb. 18, at noon, come hear NCSU assistant biology professor Heather Patisaul share what she’s finding about BPA’s potential permanent effects in a talk entitled “Effects of Developmental Exposure to Bisphenol-A on the Ovary and Brain.” Pizza Lunch is free and open to science journalists and science communicators of all stripes. Feel free to forward this invitation to anyone you would like to see included. RSVPs are required (for a reliable slice count) to cclabby@amsci.org. Directions to Sigma XI: http://www.sigmaxi.org/about/center/directions.shtml Read the comments on this post…